Cybersecurity

Why are market forces so weak in protecting users’ online privacy?

The main reason is that the online marketplace is economically structured around users being a commodity, data, to be aggregated and mined, not customers to be served and protected in a competitive marketplace. That’s because the overriding economic force that created the free and open commercial Internet – the predominant Silicon Valley venture capital/IPO value creation model – was and remains largely antithetical to protecting online privacy.

The Silicon Valley venture capital/IPO driven model is laser-focused on achieving Internet audience/user scale fastest in order to gain first-mover advantage and then rapid dominance of a new product or service segment. This predominant Internet economic model is predicated on a precious few investments achieving such rapid user scale that it: warrants a buy-out at an enormous premium multiple; enables fast and exceptionally-profitable liquidity (via the new secondary derivative market for private venture shares or employee options); or broad liquidity via a public IPO.

What is the essential critical element of achieving audience/user scale fastest? Free. No direct cost to the user fuels fastest, frictionless, viral adoption. This free economic model presupposes online advertising as an eventual monetization mechanism and shuns products and services directly paid for by the user because their inherent time-to-market is too slow and their upfront sunk cost of sales and customer service is too high for this predominant value creation model.

Reports that “Twitter Can Censor by Country” is a perfect example of how the world is changing the Internet. Change is a two-way street. Conventional wisdom that only assumes the Internet is changing the world risks being blind-sided by the Internet’s underappreciated exa-trend: how the world is changing the Internet.

See my Forbes Tech Capitalist post: "Twitter Realpolitik & the Sovereignization of the Internet" to learn about Twitter's new realpolitik and how sovereign powers will increasingly be asserting themselves vis a vis the Internet.

Since most people focus on how the Internet is changing the world, few focus on the reverse -- how much the world is changing the Internet.

See My Forbes Tech Capitalist blog post to learn the "Seven Ways the World is Changing the Internet."

The House Manager’s Amendment to the pending House Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) fixed the major legitimate problems with the original bill, effectively isolating the small but extremely vociferous minority of SOPA opponents, especially Google.

See my Forbes Tech Capitalist post here for a political outlook of the SOPA/PIPA anti-piracy legislation, which is likely to become law in 2012.

Many thanks to Adam Thierer of the Technology Liberation Front, for selecting my book, Search & Destroy, as a top twenty most Important Cyber-Law & Info-Tech Policy books of 2011 because “it represented the beginning of an articulation of a philosophy of “cyber-conservatism.”  I also thank Adam for his critical and insightful review of Search & Destroy, which clearly delineates his principled cyber-libertarian differences with my principled “cyber-conservative” views.

The kerfuffle painting the Google Wallet App as an innocent victim of Verizon blocking -- in violation of an "open" Internet and net neutrality regulations -- completely misses the forest for the trees. This conflict revolves around two ongoing industry battles.

To see what this kerfuffle is really all about read my Forbes Tech Capitalist blog post here: Android's Pickpocket behind Google Wallet.

The likely passage of online anti-piracy legislation (SOPA/PIPA) in 2012 has put a spotlight on the substantial ad-based business interests aligned with piracy and against piracy enforcement.

See my Forbes Tech Capitalist post here to learn why Grand Theft Auto-mated is such big business and so anti-piracy enforcement.

Grand Theft Auto-mated! Online Ad-Economics Fuel Piracy & SOPA Opposition

In compiling and ranking the top threats facing Google, I was amazed at the breadth, depth, diversity and seriousness of the threats and liabilities facing Google.

Please see my Forbes Tech Capitalist post here to learn the ranking of what threats to Google are most serious and why.

How could Google fail to meet the security needs of the City of Los Angeles in its trophy government cloud contract?

Learn why in my Forbes Tech Capitalist post here, entitled "Google Too Fast and Loose for LAPD."

See my Forbes Tech Capitalist post "The Next Leg of Wireless Growth? here.